Kashmir, described by Sir Francis Younghusband, painted by Major E. Molyneux

by Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

IN THE SIND VALLEY

To realise the full, long-measured roll of their majestic evolution we should have to go back to the time when the swift revolving sun—itself one only among a hundred million other stars of no less magnitude—swished off from its circumference the wreath of fiery mist now called the Earth; and we should have to trace that mist, cooling and consolidating, first to a molten mass with a plastic crust enveloped in a dense and watery atmosphere, and then to a hardened surface of dry land with cavities in which the ocean settled. But the story, as it is with more detailed accuracy known, commences at the time when a shallow sea covered central and northern India, and extended over the site of the present Himalaya, including Kashmir and the region of the mighty peaks behind. This, then, is the first essential fact to lay hold of, that at the commencement of the authentic history of Kashmir, the whole—vale and mountain peak alike—lay unborn beneath the sea.

How long ago this was it is not possible to say within a million years or so. But this much may be said with certainty, that the period is to be reckoned not in thousands, nor yet in hundreds of thousands, but in millions of years. Geologists have names for different geological epochs, and do not usually speak of them by definite numbers of years, for there is still much controversy as to the precise length of time occupied by each. But to fix in the mind of the general reader a rough idea of the immense periods of time with which we are dealing in tracing the history of the mountains, it is useful to speak in terms of numbers, even though they may be only very approximately correct. We may then assume that the oldest rocks in Kashmir were deposited in sediment at the bottom of the afore-mentioned shallow sea a hundred million years ago. Some geologists and biologists think that a still longer time must have elapsed. Some physicists would maintain that even so much is not allowable. But as an average opinion, we may take a hundred million years ago as the commencement of Kashmir history.

What were the limits of the sea which then rolled over the site of Kashmir is not yet precisely known. But the lower portion of the Indian peninsula was then dry land, and connected by land with Africa; and the sea probably extended westward to Europe and eastward to China. Into it the rivers bore down the debris and detritus worked off by the rain from the dry land; and thus were slowly deposited, in the long course of many million years, sediments hundreds and thousands of feet in thickness which, subsequently upheaved and hardened, form the Kashmir mountains of the present day.

The first great movement of which authentic record has yet been traced took place at the close of the Jaunsar period. The bosom of the earth heaved restlessly, and what had already been deposited in the depths of the sea now emerged above the surface. Volcanoes burst through the crust, and the sedimentary deposits, hardened into rock, were covered with sheets of lava and volcanic ash, which now form the hills at the back of Srinagar, including the Takht-i-Suliman.

This was Kashmir's first appearance—not, however, in the form of a beautiful valley surrounded by forests and snow-capped mountains, but rather in the form of an archipelago of bare volcanic islands. And even these were not permanent, for a period of general subsidence followed and they slowly sank beneath the sea which was then probably connected with America.

During the Devonian period Kashmir was still submerged; but in a subsequent portion of the time when the Carbonaceous system was being deposited there was a second period of great volcanic activity, when the southern portion of Kashmir again formed an archipelago of volcanic islands.

Eventually all Kashmir emerged, and became part of the mainland of India at that time joined with Africa; so that Kashmir which had before been joined by sea with America was now joined by land with Africa. Such are the mighty movements of this seemingly immovable earth.

But it was only for a brief space that Kashmir was visible. Then once again, in mid-Carboniferous times, it subsided beneath the sea, there to remain for some millions of years till the early Tertiary period, four million years ago, when it again emerged, and the sea was gradually pushed back from Tibet and the adjacent Himalaya, till by the end of the Eocene period both Tibet and the whole Himalaya had finally become dry land. Kashmir was now a portion of the continental area and the culminating effort of the earth forces was at hand. For yet another period of great volcanic activity ensued, connected, perhaps, with the crustal disturbances to which the origin of the Himalaya is attributed. Masses of molten granite were extruded from beneath the earth's surface through the sedimentary deposit. And these granitic masses, issuing from the fiery interior of the earth, pushing ever upward, reached and passed the level of eternal snow till they finally settled into the line of matchless peaks now known as the Himalaya.